What's Next? (Part 1 of 2)
Friday, October 12, 2012
So this took me a while to get back to. Sorry, I'm kinda preoccupied with things I'm not prepared to talk about here (yet).
Anyway.
As Acey predicted in the comments on my last post, my enthusiasm for MUGEN creation has returned this week, at least in part because I had to go and test all of my unfinished characters so I could write this post about what they still need. So without further ado, here's the first part of the list (more coming soon; I have a few characters still to evaluate):
- I'm pretty happy with him as he is. I just went back and added a Black Lantern power set to Parasite (see that below), and the test fights I staged between those two were a ton of fun. This is probably the creation I'm proudest of (well, Luthor is probably a close second :) ).
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- intros
- "Skrullektra" (a la Secret Invasion)
- vs Daredevil
- vs Wolverine
- vs Catwoman
- winposes
- add transition frames to current turn-and-pose
- take a cue from Marrow's "perfect" winpose (sai throw at screen)
- basics
- swap medium & strong standing punches
- animate / tweak vertical jump
- strong standing kick
- crouching medium punch / medium kick
- weak air punch / air kick
- special attacks
- air sai throw
- spin kick (like chun-li's)
- hyper attacks
- finish Death's Touch (hyper sai throw): better FX, knock-back, recovery time, etc
- finish Ninjitsu (Parasite's version is better right now)
- Focused Chi - temporarily boost damage, speed, and reduce damage taken
- Inner Calm - temporarily raise attack damage
- Catsai & Dare (Amalgam hyper)
- Blackest Night Hal basically has all the Green Lantern stuff — with SethZankuten's balance tweaks to boot — so I'm not going to do anything else to this old version.
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- finish Iceberg (Amalgam) hyper
- Pillar of Ice hyper
- Fire & Ice team hyper
(I'm taking my cue for her movelist from Avengers Alliance; there are a ton of great ideas in that game, and if you're not playing it, you should be)
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- Basics
- her stance and jump anims should be redone
- standing medium/hard punch & kick
- all crouching attacks
- air medium/hard punch & kick
- One or more throw(s)
- Specials
- Change Bubble to be more like Force Spheres (Avengers Alliance move)
- Force Field
- Hypers
- Rename Bubble Storm to Force Volley (and tweak it for better FX)
- Force Cage (Avengers Alliance move)
- Fantasticar charge? (meh, maybe not...)
- Required sprites
- her get-hits / being thrown sprites need quite a bit of polish. -_-
- Custom intros
- vs Dr. Doom
- vs Namor
- vs Reed
- vs Johnny
- vs Ben
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- I'd like to add a few more helper characters to the Personal Superhero hyper, for non-Orange Lantern palettes (e.g. Bizarro, Mercy Graves, maybe Luthor-Superboy or Everyman)
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- Lobo the Duck (Amalgam) hyper
- more intros & winposes, maybe...
- Basics still missing
- fwd/back jumps
- standing medium punch
- weak & medium standing kick
- all air & crouching basics =P
- finish the rest of the get-hits
- Specials
- freezing ray -- stand = freezes
- electro blast -- stand = shocks
- flare burst -- crouch = burns
- holographic illusions = creates 2 doppelgangers...the 3 attack (the real one that hits is determined by button)
- light blast -- stand = knocks P2 back to the wall
- sonic wave -- air = makes P2 dizzy
- teleport
- solidify gas = rocks appear on air and fall (different distances)
- force field generator = superblock, repels P2
- Hypers
- Mental Paralysis.... hyper level 1, stand, = paralyzes P2 and hits him on walls and floor
- black light.... hyper level 1 = screen goes dark(palfx) and mandarin gets in custom combo mode
- desintegration beam.... hyper level 3 = big beam
- vortex ring (flight).... flight mode
- force blast.... hyper level 1, stand, air = hit w/ knockback
- magnetic waves.... hyper level 1 = like Magneto's
- poison gas.... hyper level 1 = P2 loses energy by degrees
(Most of this movelist was actually planned out by McCready a looooong time ago)
- I still want to replace her sprites and recode her moves, but realistically, I think this may not happen. -_-
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- Then, it's all about the power sets!
- Flash: finish Speed Force hyper
- Lobo: Rotgut special
- Plastic Man: Stone Fists special
- Etrigan: Dancing Blazes hyper
- Darkseid: Omega Sanction hyper
- Aquaman: whale/shark summon hyper
- Doomsday: adaptive evolution special / asteroid smash hyper
- The Atom: Subatomic Adventure hyper
- Shazam: Electric charge special / lightning strike hyper
- Starfire: Koriand'r Special
- Bane: charging fist special / bat-breaker hyper
- Vixen: Elephant Charge hyper
- Mongul: Earthquake special / Mongul's Insanity hyper
- Orange Lantern: Orange Corps hyper
- Star Sapphire: Love Conquers All hyper
- Black Lantern: Corrupting Touch special / Lifeforce Boost hyper (DONE THIS WEEK, WOOHOO!)
- Hulk: Super Armor
- Thor: Mystic Rainfall hyper
- Spider-Man: finish/fix Maximum Spider hyper
- Iron Man: finish/fix Nano Assault hyper
- Crystal: Element Storm hyper
- Wolverine: Weapon X hyper
- Dr. Doom: finish/fix Photon Array hyper
- Thanos: Stone Walls hyper
- Juggernaut: Power Up hyper / Super Armor
- Mr. Fantastic: finish Elastic Slam special / Pliable Pounder hyper
- Venom: Venom Fang special / Death Bite hyper
- Nightcrawler: Triple Threat Teleport hyper
- Songbird: finish Decibel Barrage special / Shatter Scream hyper
- Rhino: Rampage hyper
- Storm: Lightning Storm hyper
- Daredevil: finish Radar Sense special / ??? hyper
- Nothing; I'm satisfied. :)
Stay tuned for part 2; I promise it won't take me 3 months to write it!
Labels: Blackest Night Hal, Elektra, Green Lantern, Ice, Invisible Woman, Lex Luthor, Lobo, Mandarin, Marrow, Parasite, Strong Guy
[Dev Plan] Elektra
Sunday, November 27, 2011
I've got an idea. Might be a good one, might not; I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to go ahead and put this out there and see what y'all think.
As I've mentioned recently, I've got things I still want to accomplish in MUGEN before I fade away, but I'm struggling with motivation and making the time to do them. Looking back at what kept me motivated to finish Blackest Night Hal, my biggest and arguably most ambitious work so far, I remembered the Release Watch posts. This post serves as the first in something similar, but a little more detailed: I'm calling it a Dev Plan. In a nutshell, I'm going to list my development plan for finishing the character, getting them to what I can consider “done.” some of it is coding, some spriting, some is both. All of it is primarily on me, since Daraku and XFields are both apparently busy at the moment.
If this post works to rekindle my enthusiasm for the project (and I hope it does), I plan to continue the series with more Dev Plans for my other still-in-progress WIP characters, so everything's out in the open, no hidden agenda. Today, let's talk about Elektra.
Looking back, I realized that I haven't released a new version of Elektra since Scruffyversary 2009! That's... just sad. Yes, most of my focus last year was on Blackest Night Hal and Parasite (those needy jerks!), but that's no excuse for not giving Ms. Natchios a little love. Here's what her dev plan currently looks like:
- finish all get-hit animations
- add parry and/or push-back commands
- revamp Curse of the Hand projectile sprites
- intros:
- “skrullektra”
- vs Daredevil
- vs Wolverine
- vs Catwoman (DC vs Marvel counterpart)
- win poses:
- add transition frame(s) to the current turn-and-pose
- take a cue from marrow's “perfect” winpose? (e.g, throw a sai at the player)
- basic attacks:
- medium crouching kick should slide forward a little
- do a new medium crouching punch
- finish animating the hair on strong air kick
- strong standing kick
- special attacks:
- air sai throw
- spin kick (like Chun-li's)
- tweak hyper sai throw (better FX, knock-back, recovery time, etc)
- hyper attacks:
- finish Ninjitsu (temporary shadow clones)
Hmm. Now that I've listed it all out, I realize that she needs a couple more hypers. Anyone got any bright ideas?
Vlog #1: New Stuff is on the Way!
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
I just realized it's been over a year since I've posted any new videos to YouTube, so I just did this one as kind of a status update / signal of things to come. Don't know how regular these will be, but at least it's something. Bottom line: the time-hole that is grad school is done for me now, except the thesis defense in 2 weeks. Woo! So MUGEN stuff is back on my plate, and coming down the pipe soon.
Labels: Blackest Night Hal, DC vs Marvel, Elektra, Mandarin, news, Parasite, Sinestro, video, vlog
Looking Back at 2009, Looking Forward to 2010
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
This past year has been a notable one for me personally, and for the ScruffyDragon team as a whole. I know you've probably had your fill of "end of the year"/"end of the decade" posts, so I'll try not to bore you with that (much), and instead focus on my plans for the new year.
But first, a brief recap on 2009:
- In January, as part of last year's "12 Days of Christmas", BobStarsky and I released Savage Hulk
- In April, as part of our Scruffyversary event, I released the first public version of Parasite, updated betas of Elektra and Sinestro, and "remixes" of both Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Ice
- In May, I picked up a great new partner for Parasite work, in the form of Jet the Phoenix
- Things got quiet for a little while, until I got an idea for a new "Blackest Night" edition of Hal Jordan. That effort is still ongoing, and should bear fruit soon.
Now, here are my goals for 2010:
- Blackest Night Hal Jordan (here's a list of the planned changes)
- Mandarin needs my attention before the new Iron Man movie comes out in May. At least a beta if not more.
- I'll be assisting the SGM team with the coding on tenchimuyo4ever's Green Skull character (he's an Amalgam of Red Skull and Lex Luthor; how could I say no? ;))
- Get Sinestro to a 1.0-level release before the end of the Blackest Night crossover.
- XFields and I are planning to work together again on Elektra, and bring her up to that 1.0 level as well.
- Finally get to that Marrow remix I had planned two years ago
- Invisible Woman: maybe, maybe not. Honestly I'm not very motivated to work on her right now.
- Bizarro: possibly collaboration with Kal-Elvis will re-ignite my enthusiasm here, but Kal's busy working on his music career, so I have no idea how likely that is.
So, that's the plan. I'll try to keep up the pace I set last year of posting something here at least weekly (usually on the weekend, Friday or Saturday), and we'll see how things go. I'm looking forward to a great 2010, and I wish the same for everyone here.
Labels: Blackest Night Hal, Elektra, Mandarin, Marrow, Parasite, Sinestro
Elektra beta
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Continuing the Scruffyversary over at our Scruffy Dragon game development forum, today I'm releasing an updated beta of Elektra. Compared to the alpha I released last year, she's now got:
- 4 specials & 1 hyper
- 2 intros and 1 winpose
- all get-hits and basic attacks (although a few are clone moves for the moment)
- decent, but not killer, AI (she tends to spam her projectiles, actually =P)
Would have liked to have done more, but I've got a lot of moving pieces in my life right now and Daraku (my sprite-making partner on this character) is busy with other projects, so this was the most I could get done and feel good about.
Get the new Elektra beta on her page, or over in the release thread at SD.
Labels: Elektra, Scruffyversary
On second thought...
Friday, March 13, 2009
Well, just as I was getting ready to post a spritesheet of color-swapped Psylocke get-hit sprites to crowdsource for Elektra tonight, I got a PM from Daraku on the ScruffyDragon board, with a large handful of them already done! :) There are still some left to do, but suddenly I feel better about the two of us getting them done in time for her beta release... which is now looking like it's going to wind up being part of next month's big ScruffyVersary event.
Meanwhile, though, I'll be posting a video to my YouTube channel in a few days to show off some of the new stuff.
Labels: Elektra
Update on Elektra (and Parasite!)
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Thanks to everyone who's given me suggestions on Elektra; I think I've settled upon the final palettes for her next release:
classic | modern | movie | Psylocke | Rogue | Ms.Marvel
black | silver | white | Lady Shiva | Catwoman | Batwoman
The six "normal" Elektra palettes are on the left; the six "cosplay" palettes are on the right, 3 inspired by Marvel's characters, 3 inspired by DC's. Kageuchi also suggested a "Catsai" palette based on her Amalgam with Catwoman; I've done one, but it's not one of the default 12; you would need to hand-edit your .def file to use it.
Now, to more substantial news about her progress: I've decided to try an experiment. It's no secret I hate doing get-hit sprites; I've said so a few times on this blog. But a MUGEN character has got to have them or they look really weird in-game. Soooooo... I'm going to try crowdsourcing them. What that means can be summed up in an old saying: "many hands make light work." Or in other words, I'm ripping clean new versions of Psylocke's get-hit sprites and color-swapping them to Elektra's default/working palette, and when I'm done I'll post the sheet and ask anyone who's interested to help me edit them. It'll get her ready for release quite a bit faster, so everyone benefits! :) I may do it for Sinestro too, in the interest of making faster progress on some of my longest-running WIPs.
Another of my long-running WIPs, Parasite, got some attention tonight: I gave him an Elektra power set, and implemented the "Nerve Strike" special that Elektra's going to have in the next release:
And, one more: my buddy and co-ScruffyDragon SethZankuten came up with a new and better effect for Darkseid's Omega Blast, so I've updated Parasite with the new version as well:
And, yeah. 2am here and I've got work in the morning. So that's enough for now. ;)
Elektra's palettes
Friday, February 27, 2009
classic | modern | movie
black | silver | white
Psylocke | Rogue | Lady Shiva
As I mentioned in a couple of recent posts, I've been working on Elektra lately: adding in her missing basic attacks, get-hits, et cetera, plus adding more intros, specials, & hypers. This'll be a much more complete and playable version, at least I hope so.
Tonight I've been working on palettes. I often find it useful when working on sprite edits to come up with a totally crazy palette or two to make sure that all the different parts of my sprites are consistent in their use of colors; that's particularly important when you start adding in other sprite elements that aren't part of the character's base sprites, but which may have similar colors (like in Elektra's case: her weapons, her friends, etc). Here are the 9 palettes I've got so far for Elektra; obviously the ones on the bottom row are the "crazy" ones, but I thought I'd make them in homage to her two primary sprite base sources, and to her closest DC counterpart. Still 3 more to do to round out the 12 palette slots MUGEN provides; any suggestions?
Labels: Elektra
Cursed
Thursday, February 19, 2009
OLD
NEW
The old projectile sprites for Elektra's "Curse of the Hand" hyper were uuuuggggly. Tonight I finally decided they needed an upgrade; this'll be in the next Elektra release, which could happen pretty soon if I get my act together.
Labels: Elektra
Stuff in the pipeline
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Whew! Just like last year, the "12 days" event kinda burned me out for wanting to work on MUGEN stuff for a few weeks. But I AM doing some stuff, and a lot of things are starting to take shape in the "release pipeline", so to speak. Here are a few notes on what's in there.Hulk
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm working on a Hulk update for all y'all:- It'll have AI, thanks to the very talented assistance of Tunglashor.
- It'll have the alternate select screen portraits I posted about recently.
- It'll have some minor bug fixes.
- It'll have custom "frozen" animation for when he's fighting Ice/Bizarro/etc.
- It'll most likely have another finished hyper (the "Hulk Crush" that's about half finished and disabled in the current release).
- It'll have an arcade intro.
- There's a good chance it'll have ground and air throws.
- And, the superarmor code will likely be a little tweaked to make him slightly tougher.
Possible Betas
I'm also considering kicking out another beta of Sinestro and/or Elektra, if I can get more of their get-hit sprites finished soon. Truth be told I hate doing those kinds of sprites, so they're both kind of slow going. -_-Bone girl
And... following up on something I mentioned over a year ago, I'm feeling the need to give Marrow some attention. Her code needs an overhaul, and she could use a few new/tweaked moves, plus of course I want to add the DCvM-style to her so she plays similarly to my other characters. This one will take more work, but it really really needs to be done.The purple elephant in the room
I know that probably my most-anticipated WIP right now is Parasite, and don't worry, I haven't forgotten about him. But he needs more spit and polish before I feel comfortable releasing him, he's my baby right now and I'd hate for another unfinished version of him (like the craptastic leaked/stolen one floating around on eSnips) to get out in the wild. But he IS still being worked on, fear not.DCvM
Plus of course my teammates and I are still working on pulling everything together for the official DCvsMarvel "Phase 1" release. Seth Zankuten is currently working on play-balancing the other characters, particularly the ones like Dr. Doom and Wonder Woman that are otherwise essentially finished. For my part, I've got Amalgam hypers to finish for Lobo, GL, Luthor and Hulk. Still quite a bit of work to do on that front, but progress is being made:
Watch this space...
Labels: DC vs Marvel, Elektra, Marrow, Parasite, Savage Hulk, Sinestro
Coming back online...
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Okay, so we've successfully made the move from Utah to Virginia, and things are beginning to calm down a bit, so it's back to MUGEN work for me. Daraku over at the ScruffyDragon forums offered to help me finish Elektra, and produced a sweet ninja star throwing anim... so I coded it up tonight:
More soon.
Labels: Elektra
The 2nd Day of Christmas
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
The 12 Days of Christmas roll on with this little after-dinner mint. XFields and Beja, who did the original sprite work on Daredevil's girlfriend here, have decided to go a different direction with her design. That left all of these sprites without a proper home, which I thought was just sad, so I've decided to finish her. For now, enjoy this VERY early taste of what's to come... I call it Alpha 0.1, which should hopefully tell you how far she is from finished. That said, I wanted to show her off and give you all something new for your MUGEN select screens. Go get her here.
Note: She's nowhere close to a 1.0 public release, so there's TONS of stuff missing, moves that need tweaking, and yes, bugs. But for now, enjoy, and post any feedback you have to my email, or over at the release thread on the ScruffyDragon forum.
Labels: 12 Days of Christmas, 12Days2007, Elektra